


I'll Let the Waters Still

by brinnanza



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch is quiet for a long moment, and Reese pictures him mulling it over, approaching Reese’s insomnia, like all things, as a problem to be solved. Finally, he says, “Would you like me to read to you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Let the Waters Still

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat inspired by number 30 [here ](http://brinnanza.tumblr.com/search/writing+meme), "One more chapter" from 100 ways to say I love you. Thanks to Aadarshinah as always for the beta. Title comes from Gabrielle Aplin's "Home".

Sleep usually comes easily enough to Reese. The military and the CIA both instilled in him the ability to drop off where- and whenever he can in case the next opportunity is a long time in coming. But some nights -- when the number goes bad, when the spectre of mortality creeps too close for comfort -- he lies awake for hours, staring up at the high ceilings of his loft, and tries to keep his ghosts at bay.

Wan light from the park spills in through the picture windows and Reese thinks perhaps he should finally get some curtains -- heavy black ones to block out the light and hide him from prying eyes.

There are no cameras in the loft, Reese knows -- some appeal to privacy he didn’t ask for -- but if the cameras in the park are angled just right, there is nowhere outside of the bathroom to hide from them.

It isn’t the light keeping him up anyway.

No one had been seriously injured -- well, no one of consequence anyway -- but it had been a close call. It wasn’t his fault, Finch had told him at the time; he shouldn’t have been there anyway, and Reese had gotten everyone out of the warehouse before it blew, but if he’d been any slower, just a few moments later…

He’s been too late enough times already to keep him up for years, and he shouldn’t borrow trouble, but it keeps replaying in his mind, _what if, what if_ bouncing around his head like a ricochet.

Eventually, he gives in and taps his earpiece -- he’d forgotten to take it out again. It’s late and he’s expecting silence in return when he says, in a voice too loud for the hour, “Finch, are you there?”

“Always, Mr. Reese,” Finch replies almost immediately. His voice is a little muzzy, like he’d been sleeping or maybe dozing.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I was still up.” And oh, yes -- if Reese listens closely, he can hear the soft clatter of typing. He wonders if Finch is still in the library, sitting in the dark and illuminated by the glow of computer monitors, still dressed immaculately in a three-piece suit.

Or maybe he’s gone home. Reese imagines and then discards a series of possibilities: a comfortable, unassuming house in Queens; a brightly lit penthouse on the upper East side; a richly furnished Brownstone in Park Slope. He can see Finch in any of those places, but none of them seem quite right.

The library then. He closes his eyes and pictures it: Finch working steadily into the night, so absorbed in his code that he hasn’t noticed the late hour. An abandoned cup of tea at his elbow, Bear curled up at his feet.

He wonders if Finch can see him now, if he’s called up the park cameras on one of his screens and angled them in to see Reese sprawled out in his bed. If he’d had them up even before Reese called. They leave the comm line open almost all the time now, but he can mute it if he wishes or take out the earpiece or destroy his phone and cut off all contact. Even if he never speaks to Finch again, though, Finch can always find him. Will always be able to see.

He thinks Finch would stop if he asked, knows he would understand the implicit request of curtained windows. But right now, there’s too much in his head and an anxious restlessness in his bones, and knowing Finch is watching -- that he _could be_ watching -- quiets the storm just a little.

“Was there something you needed, Mr. Reese?” Finch asks. The sound of typing stops, and Reese pictures his hands stilling over the keyboard.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Reese admits.

Finch is quiet for a long moment, and Reese pictures him mulling it over, approaching Reese’s insomnia, like all things, as a problem to be solved. Finally, he says, “Would you like me to read to you?”

“I’d like that,” says Reese. He listens to Finch’s quiet breathing, the sound of flipping pages as Finch thumbs through whatever had already been sitting on his desk, a soft thump of the book hitting the desk again when Finch discards it. A soft creak of his chair when he pushes up from it, the uneven shuffle of his footsteps as he walks down the row of shelves. Would he run his finger along the spines, his eyes flicking over titles, none quite right?

“Ah,” says Finch after a while, and Reese can hear the quirk of a smile, even in so tiny a word. He shuffles back to -- not the desk chair, no, but the arm chair in the stacks; Reese can hear the _whumph_ when he sits down. Bear’s nails clatter on the floor as he pads over to settle down beside Finch.

There are more quiet shifting noises as Finch finds a comfortable position, and then he opens the book and begins to read. “ _Part one: The Psycho-Historians. Chapter one. Hari Seldon, born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era, died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given…_ ” 

Reese pays attention to the story at first, but it’s one he’s read before, so after a little while, he stops trying to follow it and lets Finch’s voice wash over him like the tide, dragging nightmares and _what ifs_ and _too lates_ out to sea. 

Some time later, Finch asks softly, “Mr. Reese, are you still there?”

“One more chapter,” Reese murmurs, drifting so pleasantly on Finch’s voice but unwilling to risk what he might hear alone in his head just yet.

“Very well,” says Finch, and he picks up again.

Reese listens to the soft rasp of the pages turning, to Bear making noises in his sleep, to Finch inhaling between sentences, and eventually, he listens to the deep, black silence of a mercifully dreamless sleep.

 

When Reese comes into the library the next morning and hands Finch his tea, there’s an old, worn copy of _Foundation_ on the corner of Finch’s desk, a bookmark sticking out about a third of the way through.

Finch looks up at him, then notices him looking at the book. “I can’t be sure where precisely you dropped off,” he says, “but I could continue tonight, if you’d like?”

Reese smiles, warmth expanding in his chest. “I’d like that,” he says.


End file.
